Japanese Maple 09 [Acer palmatum]
Forest/Grove/Landscape

October 16, 2022. UPDATE. I gave one pot away at the July get-together swap-n-shop: 9C. I hated to lose the pot — one of Michael Theideman’s. But I just didn’t want to fool with those two trees any longer. Now I have to see what I want to do with the others. I know that 9A will stay in its pot another year. 9B will have to be repotted, maybe in the same one, maybe in a slightly larger one for a year. A couple of the others are bound for a year in the ground.

March 16, 2022

March 16, 2022. Well, after looking at the photos on this page, I might be having second thoughts about what I did yesterday. But it’s too late. I actually split this one up into its component trees. Almost. Two really couldn’t be separated at all, because I had wired to roots together and they had completely fused together. Maybe I’ll split them up later, maybe not. The more I looked at the individual trees, any one of the seven, in fact, the less satisfied I became with the whole idea. Then John Walker told me the main problem was the primary tree, though some of the others looked OK. Finally I looked at things carefully during the dormant season and decided it was really a mess and I had to do something drastic or just throw it away. “Drastic” turned out to be splitting the thing up.

So I now have five additional single Japanese maples and one doubled up pair in a sixth pot; most of these will probably live. They’re going to have to be cared for carefully if I’m even going to be able to give them away in a couple of years. Actually I’ll keep a couple of them anyway. The first two in the photo will be Maple09A and Maple09B, and they’re keepers, though each one for a different reason. A is one Mark dug up and kept in a pot until they moved to Grants Way; B is one I bought at Pepper Place even before that. It has spawned several of the others in the group and I really like its leaves.

I’ll not start new pages for single trees unless I really like one or two in two years time. I might put some more photos here, and I might not. There are some from this morning down below.

February 28, 2020. Yep. I need to be more consistent in the way I write these notes up. First a review of last year. I did indeed separate the group about a year ago. The three big trees went in a small tokoname oval that I had bought from Mike Lee in 2014. It’s sort of the little brother of the big oval the seven trees were in before. The four smaller ones went in the ground, at the far end of the top garden level. The three trees in the pot did really well, though an early freeze prevented any kind of color display in anything in the fall of 2019. That’s too bad. The good thing is the four in the ground also did well, growing and taking on some real character.

So today I took the three out of the pot to find the root mat was everything I would have hoped for. Those thee trees are just about perfectly wedded in their roots. I cleaned them up, cutting away larger roots and a few circling runners. Then I dug up the four in the garden, and they had developed huge roots. And those huge roots were also connect in a living mat. After I trimmed and washed the roots there, it took just a little more work (not much at all) to get all seven trees in the larger tokoname oval, essentially in the same arrangement they were in before. I used a basic akadama/pumice/lava rock mix (small sizes) with a little potting soil mixed in for flavoring. I’m hoping for a lot of development in ramification, though I know there will have to be a period of readjustment being together in this pot. I might leave it untouched for two year just to concentrate on growth and twigging.

I’ll get some photos after leaves are hardened off and it looks great.

November 24, 2018. The three largest trees developed some really nice color, and the smaller ones didn’t look too bad today. I need to start working ramification of the three big one, and encourage the other four to “grow up” a little next year. That might mean planting those out in the garden for a year. Then I can put the group back together. And I have to remember that Kathy Shaner told me it’s not really a forest because strictly speaking all the trees in a forest must be the same variety. This is just a landscape planting — a saikei. Maybe I should add a little river with a bridge. 😉

April 3, 2018. I think I’m going to like this little grove eventually. It’s going to take a while for all the chopped off sticks to look like they belong here, but it’s going to work out OK. I’ve even started a couple more from the volunteers in our yard to add to the mix some day. One of them is even a red-leaf type, so that will be good.

Meanwhile it’s worth noting some things about the weird little tree from Pepper Place. In the first place, it’s just crazy tough growing and easy to root. All I have to do is stick a twig in the dirt and I’ve got a new tree started. I’ll have a whole forest of these if I keep trying. Another thing is the way the twigs grow. It’s sort of like a shishigashira, or maybe a Sharp’s Pygmy. Really small internodes and tight growth pattern. And that seems to be new this year. I’ll watch the twigs in the garden and see if it happens only in pots. I hadn’t noticed it before, so maybe that’s it. Finally, I just love the leaves. Almost a cut-leaf look to them. Very fancy.

February 24, 2018. Yesterday I finally got around to planting my little maples in the big oval I bought from Stephanie Lee at the sale of Mike’s tools and pots. The fit is pretty much ideal. And I had figured out a way to make this a traditional forest using seven trees in different places without chopping anything any more. I’m not that happy with the final placement of the right-side group of four little stumps, but I can fix that next year. The back three are in too much of a straight line side to side. I did that because I got a little rushed finishing up, and that also meant I have two other problems that need correcting next week: I left those three trees all about the same height, and I didn’t get the two newest seedlings into the group.

So here’s a little run-down of where those trees came from: The three on the left are from Mark and KC’s yard, the front one on the right is from a seedling I bought at Pepper Place in 2014 or 2015, and the two remaining ones in that group are from our yard.